History: Frank Borman Test Flight (Press Image)

Don Pierce sent me a great picture from his archive. The picture is an original 8 1/2 x 11 black and white photograph released by Eastern Air Lines in French. The picture shows the NASA Astronaut and Eastern Air Lines CEO Frank Borman on the left and Lockheed L-1011 test pilot Henry Baird (Hank) Dees on the right. The picture was taken onboard the prototype L-1011 used for flight tests conducted together with Eastern and Frank Borman. 

The original caption of the picture reads:

Frank Borman, Vice-Président du Groupe Opérational d'Eastern Air lines, après avoir piloté l'impressionnant "TRISTAR" et effecuté en outre un essai concluant de "touch and go" consistante à prendre contact avec le sol, puis à redonner des gaz en bout de piste, simulant le cas d'un atterrissage "trop court", a déclaré:

"c'est un avion pour vrais pilotes, sa parfaite stabilité en vol fait présager qu'il deviendra un appareil très populaire auprès des usagers".

Aujourd'hui l'appareil est au BOURGET. L'expérience technique de Frank Borman s'est révélée concluante puisque nous avons le loisir de présenter l'appareil au milieu de toutes les autres nouveautés du Salon. 

Here is my best effort translation since I don't speak any French (per Google translate):

Frank Borman, Deputy Chairman of the Operational Group of Eastern Air Lines, after having driven the impressive "TRISTAR" and also conducting asuccessful trials of "touch and go" to make consistent contact with the ground and to restore thrust, simulating the case of landing "too short", said:

"It's a real airplane for pilots, with its perfect stability in flight I predict that it will become a very popular vehicle among users."

Today the aircraft is at Bourget. The technical experience of Frank Borman proved conclusive since we have the opportunity to present the aircraft in the middle of all the other novelties of the show.

There are some interesting details on the cockpit panel of the test aircraft (which I assume was N1011 ... however, the picture does not identify the aircraft). 

1. There is is no pitch or auto throttle panel yet, actually there are no autopilot elements all tighter. 
2. The place of the APFDS disconnect panel is taken by a clock. 
3. The APFDS Modes panel has a clock in place of the modes annunciator. 
4. There are no TGT instruments as part of the main instrument cluster. 
5. The annunciator is displaced to the right in this prototype panel and the standby instruments are replaced with a number of other unknown instrument. 
6. The pilot side main instrument panel has a number of extra instruments that did not become part of the final production version. They are hard to make out from this picture. 

The overhead panel on the test model is also missing a number of production panels in this image. For example 

1. there an unknown panel with no light plate and a few cutouts. I suspect, that the panel did not actually do anything but was placed as a placeholder and 
2. there is no Rudder Limiter and Mach Feel panel quite yet.